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International Journal of Historical Archaeology [jha] PP060-294518 February 21, 2001 14:5 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2001

To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisonsin 19th-Century Tasmania

Eleanor Conlin Casella1

As institutions established to manage exiled British felons, the Tasmanian femalefactories consisted of four women’s prisons located throughout the island colony.The material world of these institutions mediated internal power relations. Su-perintendents, Convict Department Officials, and the female prisoners themselvesmanipulated site landscapes. Today, one of these institutions remains as a managedhistoric site. Tourists experience a tidy and unthreatening landscape of Australia’sheroic convict heritage. By juxtaposing excavated archaeological remains withpublic presentations of convict sites, I explore the position of female convicts fromthe original penal landscape to the shadows of Australian history.KEY WORDS: gender; Australia; landscapes; power.

INTRODUCTION

During the nineteenth century, the built environment became a potent and ex-plicit site of social communication. As archaeologists, we are in a unique positionto research those communications through our interpretations of material worldsand cultural landscapes. Archaeological studies of architecture have frequentlyemphasized the artifactual nature of the built environment (Deetz, 1977; Leone,1984; McGuire, 1991; Tringham, 1991; Upton, 1992). Most of these scholars haveargued that architecture plays an active role in social interaction. Such studies sit-uate physical structures within cultural landscapes of complex political meanings.The built environment shapes and enables certain behaviors, while it prevents anddiscourages others. As Michael Pearson and Colin Richards argue (Pearson andRichards, 1994, pp. xi, xii):

[The constructed environment] is locked in a reflexive relationship with lived experience ofthe world. Classifications of people and things are physically realized through architecture,

1School at Art History and Archaeology, The University of Manchester, Oxford Rd., Manchester M139PL, U.K.

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1092-7697/01/0300-0045$19.50/0C© 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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thus conceptions of order are constantly confronted from our earliest days and recollections.In some cases the most complex cosmological schemes are manifest in spatial representa-tion. However, it should not be forgotten that the derivation of such meaning is contingent,on people and practice.

This paper presents a diachronic perspective on engendered power relationsthrough analysis of two nineteenth-century female convict prisons in Tasmania,Australia. I explore how women’s sites from Tasmania’s Convict Era have beencreated, rejected and reinterpreted. These sites have never existed in isolation; theirconstruction, occupation, and modern presentation all create particular elementsof Tasmania’s current cultural landscape. Archaeological investigations of femaleconvict sites must peel apart the various layers of landscape, exposing variations ofappropriation that occurred, and continue to occur, to create the sites we experiencetoday. For in visiting a Tasmanian Convict Era site, we view a “palimpsest” ofsocial action. We view the material remains of nineteenth century disciplinaryarchitecture designed and built by men of the Convict Department, intertwined withresidues of insubordination by the female convicts, overlain by later obliteration,avoidance, conservation, and marketing of these sites as authentic experiencesof Australian female colonial history. This paper will consider the architectural,documentary and artifactual remains of the prisons to explore both the dynamicsof domination of and resistance by convict women in the past, and the constructionof female convict history today.

THE ROSS FACTORY ARCHAEOLOGY PROJECT

From November 1995 to March 1999, I directed archaeological research atthe Ross Factory Historic Site, a female convict site in Tasmania, Australia (Fig. 1).Over two seasons, excavation trenches opened 105 m2, divided among three differ-ent areas of the site: the crime class dormitories, the hiring class dormitories, andthe solitary cells (Casella, 1997, 1999). These trenches contained archaeologicalremains from three different probationary states experienced by female convicts atthe Ross institution. Project participants included Tasmanian high school studentsand teachers, avocational archaeologists, local community volunteers, AboriginalHeritage Officers, and students from numerous Australian universities.

Excavation of these areas enabled me to pose research questions on the gen-dered nature of penal incarceration, and the construction and contestation of powerrelationships through material culture. Although only one Convict Era buildingremains standing at this protected Historic Reserve, subsurface remains includesubstantial structural foundations, underfloor deposits, pebble-pack courtyards,and an elaborate sandstone drain system never documented in Ross constructionor sanitation records (Casella, 1997, 1999). In this paper, archaeological remainsof the solitary cells will be interpreted as reflecting a cultural landscape of bothinstitutional domination and inmate resistance.

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Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century Tasmania 47

Fig. 1. Van Diemen’s Land and the Ross Factory site plan.

THE FEMALE FACTORY SYSTEM OF VAN DIEMEN’S LAND

After losing Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia to the “North American insur-rection,” British Parliament sought alternative locations for the deportation andtransportation of undesirable elements of society. With the arrival of the First Fleet

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in Sydney Harbour in January 1788, New South Wales was established as the firstAustralian penal colony. Rumors of French mercantile exploration of Australianmaritime resources convinced British Parliament in 1803 to establish a permanentpresence in Van Diemen’s Land or Tasmania (Kociumbas, 1992). This distant is-land soon became the primary Australian penal colony (Robson, 1983). By 1822,British convicts comprised over 58% of the total non-Aboriginal population ofVan Diemen’s Land (Hughes, 1988, p. 371).

To organize and administer this massive convict population within such aninfant settlement, colonial officials eagerly adopted new institutional designs andcriminal reform philosophies developed by British Parliamentarians, elite indus-trialists, Quaker lobbyists, and social reformers (Byrne, 1993; Ignatieff, 1978).Thus, the Tasmanian convict landscape became a testing ground for modern penalinstitutional systems. As part of this infrastructure, the “female factories” formeda loosely networked series of women’s prisons from 1829, when the CascadeFactory was founded in Hobart, until 1855, when the British ceased convict trans-portation to the Van Diemen’s Land colony. Despite traditional portrayals of fe-male convicts as a monolithic “bunch of damned whores” (Daniels, 1993; Oxley,1997; Sturma, 1978; Summers, 1975), recent analysis of Convict Departmentrecords demonstrated that a vast majority of the 12,000 women transported to VanDiemen’s Land were convicted of petty theft, particularly property crimes againstdomestic employers (Oxley, 1996). Typically (and often arbitrarily) sentenced toeither 7 or 14 year terms of government servitude, female convicts experiencedvarying periods of incarceration within the female factories due to the multipleroles these institutions played within colonial society. As Salt (1984, p. 44) hasdescribed

[a] female factory became the means of regulating and controlling the use and disbursementof female convicts and of punishing the recalcitrant or criminal. It was destined to becomeworkhouse and labour bureau, marriage bureau and regulator of morality, gaol and hospital,and at the same time, to relieve the financial burden on the administration of female convictsand their many children. This very multiplicity of roles made the administration of such aninstitution a confusing and difficult task.

Based on modernist criminological theory that promoted “reform throughmanual labor” (Foucault, 1977; McLynn, 1989, pp. 249–256), the female facto-ries were expected to stimulate the “improvement” of convict women throughenforcement of morally acceptable and economically productive labor. Thus, thename “factory” was an abbreviation of the institutional title “manufactory,” andreferred to the establishments’ intended role as houses of industry. At the requestof British Parliament, married couples were hired to direct factory facilities. Thus,while the superintendent was charged with governing institutional administrationand discipline, his wife acted as head matron, directly supervising all contact withthe female inmates. A second married couple was typically hired as an assistantsuperintendent/assistant matron team. Other institutional staff included marriedmale and female overseers, a visiting magistrate, and a medical doctor, although

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this last position was frequently combined with that of the superintendent (Scrippsand Clark, 1991).

Within the institutions, women were separated into three categories. Uponincarceration, a convict joined the contained “crime class” and worked inside theprison on laundry and sewing taskwork contracted from local free settlers and colo-nial businesses. After a period of nominally good behavior, a woman earned pro-motion to the “hiring class” and was assigned to domestic service on a local pastoralproperty. Hiring class convicts waiting for employment held supervisory positionswithin the factory, in such roles as turnkey, nursery assistant or hospital assistant.Finally, recalcitrant inmates were segregated in the “punishment class” and con-fined under “separate treatment.” Insubordination within the factory was punishedthrough solitary confinement, decreased food rations, distinctions in prison uni-form, and public humiliation, including headshaving and periods of bondage in aniron collar (Bartlett, 1994, p. 116; Damousi, 1997a,b; Daniels, 1997).

The first factory opened at Cascades (Fig. 1), a damp and gloomy valley5 miles southwest of Hobart, the colonial capital town (Rayner, 1981, pp. 3–7;Scripps and Hudspeth, 1992, p. 7). In the late 1820s, a second factory was openedin George Town to accommodate and manage female convicts in the north ofVan Diemen’s Land. Occupying a large Georgian mansion rented from the localAnglican reverend, this temporary establishment was considered highly unsatis-factory due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and limited security (Bartlett, 1994).By 1832, the experimentally designed and purpose-built Launceston Factory re-placed the George Town facility. With the 1840 cessation of transportation to NewSouth Wales, Van Diemen’s Land directly received all British convicts. The lastfemale factory was established in 1847 to alleviate overcrowding of female con-victs in Launceston and Hobart. Situated on the edge of the Ross township, a tinyrural community midway between these two colonial population centers (Rayner,1981, p. 18; Scripps and Clark, 1991, p. 7), the Ross Female Factory operated until1855 when the last remaining inmates were transferred to Hobart. Although thesefemale factories operated as a loosely networked system, two distinct forms of ar-chitectural design were employed. These forms represent two different institutionalexperiences for inmates, two different manipulations of the spatial landscape.

APPROPRIATED LANDSCAPES

The concept of a “cultural landscape” describes the process by which spa-tial places become invested with social significance (Lewis, 1979; Pearson andSullivan, 1995; Spencer-Wood, 1994a). A cultural landscape consists of geomor-phologic attributes of the natural environment (the land), human modifications ofthat place (the site), and the social, political, and economic relations invested inthat place (the significances; Meinig, 1979). Following Christopher Chippendale(1990) and Barbara Bender (1993), I believe that the appropriation of a cultural

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50 Casella

landscape requires the right to claim that space and reconstruct it as one’s own place.Thus, the appropriation of a landscape is an act of defining legitimate behaviorswithin that place (Spencer-Wood, 1994b). It is a manipulation or choreographingof experiences through the landscape.

Architecture developed as an aesthetic and intellectually driven means toclaim and create a landscape—to channel inhabitants’ experiences within the builtenvironment. As many anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have postu-lated, the years between 1780 and 1850 saw an emergence of “the modern in-stitution” (Evans, 1982; Foucault, 1977; Ignatieff, 1978; Upton, 1992). Prisonsbecame the ultimate architectural expression of the spatial orchestration wroughtby these institutions (Lynn and Armstrong, 1996). Fabricated by elite gentlemenof Britain’s emerging industrialist class, these experimental penal designs were of-ten first constructed throughout the Australian colonies (Kerr, 1984), as the HomeGovernment used newly appropriated southern lands to operationalize utilitarianphilosophies of social reform.

APPROPRIATIONS IN THE PAST: AN ARCHITECTURE OF REFORM

The history of modern penal design can be traced to the late eighteenth century.English prison reform began with John Howard, a Bedfordshire County Sheriff,who conducted tours of the existing British gaols and debtors houses during the1770s and 80s. His meticulous 1792 report,The State of the Prisons, detaileda carnival of horrors occurring behind medieval prison walls. Howard dispas-sionately documented vermin-infested subterranean dungeons awash with humanfilth, indiscriminate minglings of male and female inmates, and desperate pau-pers rotting in chains unable to afford the food bribes required by corrupt gaolers.Howard’s relentless exposures of penal horrors eventually created an interest innew “reformed” penitentiary architecture designed by elite industrialist gentle-men, such as Jeremy Bentham (1791, 1830). As Michel Foucault dramaticallytheorized (Foucault, 1977), these new designs emphasized disciplinary reform ofthe mind over corporeal punishment of the flesh. Two basic architectural plansdeveloped out of this penal transformation: the “modern” radial prison, and themore conservative rectilinear plan.

The Radial Plan: An Architecture of Discipline

The modern prison encouraged reform through the principals of surveil-lance (Foucault, 1977; Marcus, 1994). Created and channeled through architecture,surveillance dissociated the traditional dyad of seeing and being seen. As Foucaultargued, visible yet unverifiable observation of inmates resulted in their internal-ization of behavioral conformity, or “reform” (Foucault, 1977).

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Modifying Bentham’s original panopticonic plan, radial penitentiaries cons-tructed for male convicts at Cherry Hill, Pennsylvania (1829), Pentonville, England(1842), and Port Arthur, Tasmania (1847) utilized degrees of sensory deprivationcombined with unpredictable yet frequent direct surveillance to “soften the mindto virtuous suggestion,” as an English gaoler wrote (Ignatieff, 1978, p. 74). TheTasmanian Convict Department incorporated modernist approaches by choosinga radial plan for the new Launceston Female Factory in 1832.

The female prisoner experienced a fully appropriated landscape constructedthrough the medium of architectural design. Not only were her bodily movementschoreographed by innumerable musters and inspection parades, but the very sen-sory experiences allowed her were limited. The radial plan channeled soundstowards the superintendent’s quarters and the chapel; stray noises would be am-plified by the long empty corridors connecting separate cells, enabling auditorysurveillance to expose the offenders (Weidenhofer, 1981, p. 79). Walls and gratedwindows framed any views. Textures remained institutionally prescribed: wooluniforms, enameled plates, cold laundry water. Rather than corporeal punishmentsuch as flogging, the punishment for disruptive displays of resistance was usuallysolitary confinement, or temporary relocation to a dark cell insulated from theoutside world through a series of antechambers and thick stone walls.

The theme of restriction was not limited to inmate experiences. The move-ment of female prisoners and the circulation of air and water became interwovenwith myths of cleanliness and purification (Ignatieff, 1978, p. 60). Contact of anyform became perceived as a dangerous site for transmission; both social interactionand physical proximity created the opportunity for “physical and moral contagion”(Evans, 1982, pp. 115, 116). As fear of “gaol fever” (later identified as typhus)combined with premodern concepts of infectious contamination, penal designs be-gan to incorporate meticulous detail on the cleansing circulation of air and waterthrough the institution (Evans, 1982). These penal designs were intended to archi-tecturally incorporate prevailing medical philosophies. Contagion was believed tobe spread through ephemeral “humors” discharged by diseased or dead beings.As an experimental prison, Launceston Female Factory plans included a carefullydrafted notation of counterclockwise water flow through the radial yards (Fig. 2).Reform (or moral purification) was thus ideally achieved through juxtaposition ofmotion: as the inmate remained stationary, contained within her cell, the ephemeral“humors” of the prison would circulate, replacing the purged miasmas with cleanwater and air for inhabitants.

Scholars like Hillier and Hanson (1984) have suggested that in typical insti-tutions such as corporate headquarters, schools, museums, and factories, the moreinterior and segregated a place, the greater the power held there. In contrast, thepanoptic prison was designed to operate as an inverted institution, subordination in-creasing with spatial segregation. (Marcus, 1994). This model can be directly seenin the modernist radial prison constructed at Launceston (Fig. 2), with dominance

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Fig. 2. Schematic architectural layout of the Launceston Female Factory, c. 1832.

concentrated in the centrally located superintendent’s quarters, and subordinationspread throughout the interior radial arms, where convict dormitories and work-rooms were situated. Obviously, the centralized location of gaolers was designedto promote surveillance, to encourage the disciplinary process of secular and sym-bolic reform (Foucault, 1977).

Ultimately, the construction of a radial prison at Launceston in 1832 repre-sented an embracing of the modernist reform philosophy by architects and govern-ment officials. In 1847, Lieutenant Governor William Denison advised his superi-ors in London to fund the construction of a new radial prison for male convicts atPort Arthur, the largest penal settlement in colonial Australia (Weidenhofer, 1981,p. 75). Although Port Arthur’s “Model Penitentiary” was more explicitly based onJeremy Bentham’s disciplinary reform system, it was designed as an extreme ex-pression of the same radial design built for Launceston’s Female Factory 15 yearsearlier.

Why was a colonial women’s prison used to architecturally experiment withthis particular form of landscape appropriation? Paula Byrne, an Australian eco-nomic historian, has suggested that an explanation of this phenomena can be foundthrough interpreting nineteenth-century labor relations. Because of the domestic

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nature of female convict labor, their lives were “more closely related to incarcera-tion than to [male] waged labor” (Byrne, 1993, pp. 38–50). By the early nineteenthcentury, the British textile industry had industrialized, unmarried women furnish-ing the bulk of factory labor (Valenze, 1995, pp. 85–112). Sewing and laundry,tasks traditionally gendered female, were not only considered the obvious ones forretraining transported criminal women, they were also most easily adapted to thefactory-like atmosphere of a penal institution. In contrast, male convicts typicallyserved their sentences through the construction of extensive roadworks, a vast trans-portation network that formed the backbone of Tasmania’s colonial development(TSDT, 1988). The dispersed nature of road gang labor discouraged general incar-ceration programs for male convicts until the new radial architecture had provenits reformatory power. Female imprisonment has been interpreted as central to theentire development of penal institutions. Following Byrne (1993, p. 278), AdrienHowe (1994, p. 156) argued:

. . . . . [T]he emphasis placed on punishing women with imprisonment positioned themclosely to the development of the prison. Indeed, convict women were more closely linked tothe prison as an institution than male convicts: they were the first to experience nineteenth-century prison relations in the [Australian] colonies.

Thus, the 1832 Launceston’s Female Factory can be interpreted as an earlyexperimentation with the radial plan, an architectural design that would later cometo dominate “modern” penitentiaries throughout the western world. Fifteen yearslater, as the Tasmanian Convict Department authorized the construction of the PortArthur “Model Penitentiary” for male convicts, the last female factory was simul-taneously established at the rural township of Ross. J. S. Hampton, Comptroller-General of Convicts, approved a different architectural plan. He chose to constructa conservative rectilinear prison for the accommodation of female convicts. Thisarchitectural style was the second design to emerge from the late eighteenth centuryprison reform movement.

The Rectilinear Plan: An Architecture of Containment

The township of Ross was explicitly chosen as the site for the new femalefactory because of its role as an interior rural community. Besides providing do-mestic labor to the burgeoning inland settlements, the Ross Factory was intended toprovide shelter and protection to reforming convicts who were perceived to be tooeasily wooed back to prostitution and vice under the corrupting urban influencesof Hobart and Launceston (Scripps and Clark, 1991, p. 7; Sturma, 1978).

Much of the female recidivism found in urban factories was due to illegitimatepregnancies. Since strict governmental policies regulated all marriage applicationsinvolving female convicts, many of the illegitimate pregnancies actually resultedfrom either sexual services demanded by free settler employers or from stable“de facto” relationships between unmarried partners (Daniels, 1984). Regardless,

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illegitimate pregnancies were always attributed to the mother’s whorish lifestyle,and resulted in further periods of incarceration within a female factory. Highinfant mortality at Hobart’s gloomy factory embarrassed the Convict Depart-ment (Daniels, 1998, p. 119). The Launceston Factory, popularly rumored tobe a government-subsidized brothel (Bartlett, 1994, pp. 120–123; Rayner, 1981,pp. 17, 18; Sturma, 1978), had experienced a particularly spectacular inmateriot in 1842 that earned news coverage in both New South Wales and Britain(Daniels, 1993). Convict Department officials perceived Ross to be a healthy, re-mote, and wholesome rural location for pregnant convicts and recalcitrant offendersto undergo secondary reform. Unlike the Launceston Factory, Ross was originallyestablished as a penal station for accommodating male convicts assigned to roadgang labor. However, a large amount of expensive structural modifications weremade to adapt this prison for the accommodation of female convicts (Casella,1997, 1999). Thus, although the Convict Department did save funds by recyclinggovernment buildings already situated at Ross, economic expediency did not mo-tivate the extensive construction program that transformed the male penal stationinto the Ross Female Factory.

The cultural landscape of the Ross Factory greatly differed from that of theLaunceston Factory. While embracing the modernist philosophy of criminal re-form over corporeal punishment, the architecture of the Ross Factory attemptedthis social refabrication through more conservative methods. The Ross rectilinearplan prevented Launceston-style panopticonic surveillance (Fig. 3). Disciplinaryschemes seemed to be based upon more traditional forms of containment, withstrict interior divisions between the crime and hiring classes, the hospital andworkrooms. Fortification of boundaries between the crime and hiring class inten-sified throughout the history of the factory, with additional fencelines and a newchaplain’s quarters constructed next to the crime yard. These emphasized bound-aries increasingly restrained convicts from illicit interclass interactions. They dif-fered from Launceston in their very physical presence; the reforming process reliedon physical restraint rather than psychological surveillance, a significant differencein the very meaning and operation of the boundaries (Pearson and Richards, 1994,p. 24). Thus, the choice of a conservative rectilinear plan may have seemed ap-propriate to Lieutenant-Governor Denison and the Convict Department as theystruggled to rectify the evils of their female factory system through the establish-ment of a wholesome rural institution.

Apart from an early elevation and section drawing for privies, remarkablylittle attention was paid to circulation of air, water, refuse, or sewage throughoutthe Ross Factory. Again, Convict Department officials seemed more interestedin controlling physical movement through space, rather than in operationalizingconceptions of moral and physiological purification.

Even more significantly, the relationships of power between places withinRoss differed from those of the modernist institution represented by the Launceston

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Factory. In the panopticonic radial plan, authority concentrated in a centralizedlocation and was intended to govern all social interactions within the prison. How-ever, the staff quarters within Ross were located on the edge of the prison. Theseplaces of penal authority consisted of a series of rooms at the main entrance,and two adjoining sandstone cottages west of the main compound (Fig. 3). AsRobin Evans has argued (Evans, 1982) these positions indicated a conservativeapproach to the reformatory penal landscape. The intended purpose of authority inthese architectural designs was not so much to control interior social interactions,but to control movement between the exterior free world and the interior prisonworld—to contain the women within the prison. Rather than exclusively focusingon reforming convict’s minds, the gaolers instead regulated the movement of ma-terials smuggled into and out of the Ross prison, and thus needed to be located inperipheral zones—guarding the gates between the inside and outside worlds, andfrequently exacting “taxes” on prison imports.

This particular architectural design predominated in England from the latesixteenth through the eighteenth century when most gaols were run through privatecontracts. However, with the emergence of the nineteenth century penal reformmovement and radial plan penitentiaries, gaolers became employees of the state,and were no longer officially permitted to supplement their income through taxationof prison imports. Superintendent’s quarters moved inside the prisons, enablingsurveillance schemes to dominate the modern reform process. The rectilinear planof Ross can therefore be interpreted as a conservative backlash to modern philoso-phies of convict reform through disciplinary surveillance. The penal architectureitself enabled the reintroduction of more traditional relationships between gaolerand inmate, as further evidenced through documentary sources replete with ref-erences to extensive trade of nominally forbidden materials throughout the Rossprison (Damousi, 1997a; Daniels, 1998). Preliminary results from recent archaeo-logical excavations document the presence of such illicit materials, with olive-glassbottle fragments, kaolin clay tobacco pipes, British currency, and decorative but-tons and beads recovered from both the crime class dormitory and the solitary cells(Casella, 1996a, 1997, 1999). In essence, the conservative architectural design ofRoss itself encouraged this illicit market.

AN APPROPRIATED PLACE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONSOF THE SOLITARY CELLS

Ultimately, such interpretations of architectural plans elucidate variationsin the disciplinary schemes developed and enacted to “reform” female convicts.However, these plans can illuminate only the sanctioned cultural landscape ofthe Ross Female Factory. This site was a locus of conflict, a cultural landscapecreated by the negotiation of places fabricated and patrolled by men, and placesappropriated and occupied by incarcerated women. Female convicts of the Ross

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Female Factory, far from passively accepting reforms of the convict system, overtlyand covertly worked that system to minimize their disadvantage (Scott, 1985).The built environment has encoded not only the disciplinary intentions of maledesigners, officers, and guards, but also negotiations of that power wrought bythe female convicts. This process of active resistance can be interpreted from bothdocumentary and material sources of data. Results from the 1997 field season of theRoss Factory Archaeology Project suggest a pattern of insubordination within thesolitary cells, with the excavated features of that built environment demonstratingboth the intentional circumvention of factory regulations, and a constant reciprocityof power within this penal landscape.

A Reformatory Place

On December 11, 1848, Dr. W. J. Irvine, the superintendent of the RossFactory, wrote to the comptroller-general of the Convict Department, requestingthe construction of 12 separate cells between the station and the outside fence. Thenew sandstone accommodation would “be of great service in punishing, or whatis much to be preferred, preventing” the homosexual encounters believed to beoccurring between inmates of the crime class ward (Archives of Tasmania (AOT)MM 62/1/11037, 1848). Beyond the problematic social stigma attached to suchsexual activities, these liaisons were believed to be responsible for the procure-ment and trade of illicit “luxuries” throughout the prison (AOT MM 62/31/13859,1850). By August 25, 1849, the comptroller-general submitted this request to theCommittee of Officers on Convict Expenditure (AOT MM 62/26/12375, 1849),stating that

[i]n Lord Gray’s Despatch dated 31st January 1849,. . . it is stated, that part of the savingaffected hereby might properly be applied [at Ross] in building and putting up an additionalnumber of Separate Cells, so that the worst conducted of these Women might be subjectedto strict separate confinement, and that separation at night might ultimately become thegeneral rule.

By 1851, a new superintendent had been enlisted at the Ross Factory, and workon the block of 12 sandstone solitary cells was completed (Scripps and Clark, 1991,p. 12). This new structure was located outside the main penal compound, secludedfrom the central grounds and convict workrooms by a nine foot timber fence, andimmediately overlooked by an impressive neogothic-style chapel also completedthat year (Casella, 1996a, p. 4).

During the 1997 seasons of the Ross Factory Archaeology Project, a 4 msquare trench was excavated over the solitary cells (Fig. 4). Two cells were sampled,and a central cell completely excavated. Structural elements of the original buildingwere uncovered, including packed rubble foundations and courses of sandstonewall (Casella, 1997, 1999).

Architecturally, the solitary cells were designed to maximize the isolation offemale inmates. Rough cut sandstone walls, approximately 50 cm (19.7 in.) thick,

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Fig. 4. Area C (Solitary Cells) excavation trench. Photo taken facing south.

contained women undergoing “separate treatment,” minimizing sound transfer andcommunication between cells. Archaeological excavations determined individualcells were approximately 1.3 m× 2 m (Fig. 4), or roughly 4× 6 feet, a spacejust large enough to accommodate a single inmate. Architectural plans suggest thecells were entered from the northern exterior (Fig. 3). Archaeological evidence forthe location of cell doors remains ambiguous, with postfactory period recyclingand demolition of the structure removing most of the superstructure, including alldoor sills or stairways that might have existed. The rubble construction methodpredominant in convict-built sandstone structures provides minimal evidence forinterpretation of fenestration once threshold courses have been removed.

Inside the excavated cells, significant architectural features were recorded.Unlike the wooden-floored dormitories in the main factory compound, the solitarycells contained packed earthen floors. Furthermore, these floors appear to be sig-nificantly lower than the cell doors. The absence of architectural evidence for celldoors suggests that preservation of the structure began below entry level. However,floor features underlay 35 cm (13.8 in.) to 50 cm (19.7 in.) of demolition debrisand structural collapse (Fig. 5). This stratigraphic evidence suggests that entryinto a solitary cell required a descent of more than half a meter. This drop fur-ther suggested an interior step once existed for each cell. Regardless of the heightof the original doors, to undergo “separate treatment,” convict women descendedinto a cramped, darkened, silent cell for up to 3 weeks of isolation (Scripps andClark, 1991, pp. 26, 27). This spatial movement can be interpreted as a metaphor

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of punishment and atonement, with the stigmatized woman descending into hersolitary cell, reforming through silent prayer and contemplation, and ascending up-wards to rejoin the general penal community once her sentenced period of separatetreatment had been served (Daniels, 1998, pp. 248–249).

A Resistant Place

Power relations always include the means for resistance, or for the partial ornontransmission of governing social “laws” by members of that community. Associologist Anthony Giddens has argued, “all social actors, no matter how lowly,have some degree of penetration of the social forms which oppress them” (Giddens,1979, p. 72, original author’s italics).

After having typically been transported from the British Isles for petty prop-erty crimes (Oxley, 1996), the women transferred to the Ross Female Factorywere frequently moved to this rural prison to serve secondary punishment foroffenses committed since arriving in the colony. Conduct records indicate suchoffenses typically included illegitimate pregnancy, public drunkenness, insubor-dinate behavior, homosexuality, inciting riot, or trafficking in goods forbidden toconvicts—particularly alcohol, tobacco, and money (Damousi, 1997a,b; Oxley,1996). Therefore, a female convict sentenced to solitary confinement at Ross wasoften a tertiary offender, a women considered to be truly recalcitrant (NationalLibrary of Australia, MS 6136, Bowden Report, December 1848):

[a] hardened, reckless, miserable creature whom we sometimes behold raving under theimpulse of ungovernable passion, and indulging without remorse, in conduct which hadshe witnessed it in another, she would, in the early part of her career, have shuddered tobehold.. . .

Far from passively occupying the Ross solitary cells, the female convicts oc-cupying this structure manipulated their cultural landscape to both improve theirphysical conditions and rebel against their “separate treatment.” Trench profilesfrom inside the solitary cells suggest a pattern of active resistance to the insti-tution containing, framing, and shaping the lives of these prisoners. Respondingto the powerful penal architecture, female convicts similarly communicated theirinsubordination through the built environment of the Ross Female Factory.

Located on the lower slope of an alluvial terrace roughly 400 m (1,300 feet)east of the Macquarie River, the Ross solitary cells were built into a natural surfaceof dark brown, alkaline flood silts (Casella, 1996a, 1997). As no structural evidenceexists for internal floorboard supports or stone paving, this soil, when compacted,probably formed the first flooring surface of the solitary cells (Fig. 5).

Preliminary analysis of artifactual materials recovered from this stratigraphiclayer support this interpretation. Beyond the presence of structural materials, in-cluding brick fragments, nineteenth century wrought ferrous nails, and windowglass, a surprising amount of artifacts were recovered that could only have arrived

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Table I. Ross Factory Archaeology Project, Olive Glass and Clay Tobacco Pipes RecoveredFrom the Solitary Cells’ Floors

First floor Second floor

Olive glass alcohol bottle fragments 221.14 g (6.5%) 27.24 g (2.1%)Minimum number of vessels 6 2

Kaolin clay tobacco pipes 68.53 g (2.01%) 1.57 g (0.12%)Minimum number of vessels 7 1

Total assemblage (weight) 3402.71 g 1322.70 g

in the solitary cells through infringement of factory regulations. These “illicit ma-terials” related to forbidden practices, such as kaolin clay tobacco pipes and oliveglass alcohol bottles (Table I).

Recent historical research has begun to explore the dynamics of a thriv-ing underground economy within convict establishments of Van Diemen’s Land(Damousi, 1997b; Daniels, 1993, 1998; Oxley, 1996; Maxwell-Stewart, 1997).This scholarship has uncovered documentary accounts of smuggling and tradewithin the female factories. In her deposition to the 1842 Parliamentary Inquiryinto Female Convict Discipline, prisoner Mary Haigh described exchange net-works within the Cascade Factory (AOT CSO 22/50, 1841–1843). She explainedhow money and tokens were traded with sympathetic turnkeys and female over-seers for tea, meat, sugar, or tobacco. Further, archival materials at the MitchellLibrary in Sydney include a letter from Catherine Cass dated 12 January 1851,intercepted before reaching prisoner Jane Walker at the Ross Female Factory. Inthis document, Catherine Cass (of unknown relationship to Walker) begged theprisoner to “be a good girl,” and mentioned that a “box” and a pound-note fromher uncle would soon be smuggled into the factory (Mitchell Library, TasmanianPapers, Number 104).

Archaeological signatures of such black market trade activities in the solitarycells could possibly be interpreted from the presence of decorative shell and copper-alloy buttons, objects which may have operated as “tokens” for underground trade(Casella, 1999), as historians have recently begun to interpret for Tasmanian malepenal stations such as Sarah Island (Maxwell-Stewart, 1997, p. 151), Point Puer,and Port Arthur (MacFie, 1998). While these buttons were not part of factoryregulation uniforms, they could have been stolen from clothing brought into thefacility for laundry or sewing taskwork. However, their presence within the solitarycells could not be directly related to such domestic activities. As further evidencefor the existence of a factory trade network, a copper 1823 George IV Britishfarthing was recovered from within the first floor of the central cell (Casella,1999). All convicts under sentence were forbidden to possess currency, as it wouldnot only decrease their dependency on necessary provisions issued through theConvict Department, but would enable them to obtain distracting “luxuries” and“temptations.”

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The archaeological data suggest that female convicts were not only manipu-lating the restrictive environment of the solitary cells through importation of theseillicit materials, but actually communicated their insubordination through destruc-tion of the structure itself. In upper demolition layers, highly decayed original rooftimbers were recovered among deposits of sandstone rubble, plaster, and mor-tar. After her field inspection, Linda Clark, Materials Conservation Officer at theQueen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tasmania), suggested thatthe decay pattern of these timbers indicated that they had been exposed to hightemperatures and some possible fire damage. Within all three excavated cells, thefirst earthen floor contained a high frequency of charcoal deposits. Further, withinthe central cell, there was a distinct lens of black soil and charcoal immediatelyoverlaying the first floor. Concentrated in the southern half of the central cell, thisblackened, hearth-like layer contained very few cultural materials, 58.6% of whichwas charcoal. Thus, it appeared that a fire had struck in the central cell, burningmost intensely in the southern half of the 4× 6 foot space, but affecting adjacentcells to the east and west.

Documentary accounts suggest that female convicts frequently practiced ar-son and vandalism to display their insubordination (Casella, 1996b, 1999). InFebruary 1829, a riot occurred at the Cascade Female Factory, the female convictprison located 5 miles west of the southern Tasmanian town of Hobart. In his1980 report to the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, historian Tony Raynersummarized the public rebellion (Rayner, 1980, pp. 24, 25):

The women convicts called out to some soldiers from the 40th Regiment on the hill over-looking the [Cascade] Factory and later bread, butter and cheese were thrown over the walls.The food was confiscated by Jesse Pullen, the overseer, but he was promptly hooted fromthe yard. [Superintendent] Lovell restored order and put the two ringleaders, Sarah Bickleyand Elizabeth Davis, in their cells. The Crime Class women, now confined to their sleepingrooms, catcalled obscenities for an hour or so and then began pushing burning clothingthrough the ventilators. Lovell put out one fire but smoke and flame erupted elsewhere andit appeared that the whole building was on fire. At this, the women in other parts of thefactory began to fear for their lives and screams for help and pleas to be let out of theiryards turned the smoke filled prison into a bedlam of noise. Some of the women fainted.At this stage more burning material was pushed down a stairwell made entirely of pine.However, this was eventually extinguished. At 9 pm Pullen was sent to get James Gordon,the Principal Superintendent of Convicts, but did not return until midnight. Gordon and thetwo constables he brought with him helped Pullen and Lovell to place the worst behaved insolitary cells.

Obviously, convict women shrewdly utilized building materials and architec-tural elements of the isolation cells and dormitories to demonstrate against theirimprisonment. Not only did they temporarily disrupt disciplinary controls overtheir everyday lives through spectacular public riots, they specifically focusedtheir rage on the architectural structures of their penal imprisonment. Througharson, the women incarcerated within the Tasmanian Female Factories producedthree powerful results. From a functionalist perspective, arson rendered the dam-aged solitary cells and dormitories uninhabitable, and was therefore an effective

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method of obstructing their confinement. Secondly, as demonstrated in the earlierhistorical account, arson provided an opportunity for inmates to perform largepublic displays of collective resistance. Such communal performance created andnourished a sense of subversive community for convict women; by engaging ingroup diplays of brazen disobedience, these women not only responded to maleauthority, they also exercised their collective power to challenge the dominantsocial system (Daniels, 1998, p. 154). Finally, arson, and general structural van-dalism, effectively communicated a symbolic transcendence of the disciplinary ar-chitecture. By directing their rage into the physical destruction of penal structures,convict inmates violently defied messages of disciplinary reform communicatedby the architecture of incarceration. Through their own modification of this builtenvironment, their vandalism constructed an architecture of resistance, a culturallandscape of insubordination.

A Reciprocal Place

Neither domination nor resistance can be interpreted as isolated events. Al-though the possibility of refusal or noncompliance exists in all social relations,power, taking substance only through social interaction, contains both domina-tion (forces of compliance) and resistance (abilities to refuse). Addressing thisdual nature, some archaeologists have adopted the Marxist concept of dialecticsto describe power relations. According to Bruce Trigger, the dialectical process“conceptualizes progress as taking the form of contradictions, which ultimatelymerge themselves in a higher truth that comprehends them both” (Trigger, 1993,p. 166). The dialectical nature of social change creates the relationship betweendomination and resistance (Trigger, 1993, p. 166).

“Domination” is that form employed by the conservative group to main-tain the societal status quo, which functions to serve their material interests.“Resistance” therefore encompasses the behaviors of those social actors seek-ing to contest, deconstruct, or transform the social order (or doing all of thesetogether). The two forms of power, by virtue of their dialectical relationship, mustalways coexist in tension; neither side can completely eradicate the other. Withinthe power of domination are the means for the power of resistance, and viceversa.

However, a basic theoretical problem exists with this interpretation of powerrelations. Given the constant and fluid nature of power, the two forces of domi-nation and resistance cannot “ultimately merge themselves in a higher truth thatcomprehends them both” (Trigger, 1993, p. 166). Such an ultimate goal can neverbe realized, as the balance of power perpetually shifts between contestants.

Responding to Marxist philosophers, both Michel Foucault and Pierre Bordieuconceptualized power relations as an interaction of “reciprocity,” focusing on thesocial advantage constantly traded between the conflicting parties (Bordieu, 1977,

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p. 5; Rabinow, 1984, p. 247). Archaeologically, the reciprocity model of powerdynamics can be evidenced through constant conflict over the solitary cells at theRoss Female Factory. Both domination of and resistance by female convicts ap-propriated this cultural landscape, alternately superpositioning themselves throughthe material record.

Although arsonist activities within the cell block probably caused a tempo-rary cessation of “separate treatment,” archaeological evidence suggests that RossFactory authorities eventually responded through reconstruction and reuse of thefacility. A second packed earth floor appeared to overlay the first in all three cellsexcavated during 1997 (Fig. 5). Approximately 12 cm (4.7 in.) thick, this upperfloor consisted of orange-brown clayey-silt. It was highly compact in all three cells,requiring strenuous excavation for its removal. This architectural feature differednoticeably in color, texture, and composition from both the natural dark-brown siltlayers and the first earthen floor of the solitary cells.

As this second floor layer also immediately overlay the burnt layer within thecentral cell, it appeared to be a “re-flooring” of this penal structure, and probablyreflected some undocumented restoration efforts by factory authorities. Eventualreoccupation of the solitary cells was evidenced by the continued presence ofconvict-related mid-nineteenth century artifacts within the second floor horizon.Although the amount of alcohol bottles and clay tobacco pipes decreased by bothweight and minimum vessel count (Table 1), there was still a recognizable presenceof such materials within the upper floor. More significantly, within the excavatedhalf of the western cell, a small semicircular pit was recorded. This intrusivefeature appeared to be dug from the upper floor into the first floor, and containedfragments of a square ferrous container, faunal bone deposits, one kaolin claypipestem fragment, and an olive glass bottle base. This last artifact retained asand-covered pontil push-up, suggesting a pre-1870 date of manufacture (Boow,1991, p. 27).

A reciprocal model of power dynamics offers an illuminating interpretationof these archaeological deposits within the Ross Factory solitary cells. Experienc-ing the degradation and isolation of architecturally enforced “separate treatment,”female convicts improved their conditions by importing forbidden luxuries—tobacco, alcohol, and increased food rations. Evidence of such illicit activitiesand possessions could be easily obscured within the loosely packed soft earthenlower floor (Fig. 5). At some point after 1851, a fire occurred within the solitarycells, concentrated in the southern half of one cell, but affecting at least the two ad-joining cells. Since documents from other female factories suggest female convictscommitted arson to create public spectacles of violent confrontation, the burningof the Ross solitary cells could be interpreted as a similar event. Provoked by suchbrazen disobedience, and saddled with a semifunctional cellblock, Ross Factoryauthorities responded by restoring the structure. The solitary cells were relaid witha harder clayey-silt, creating new floors (Fig. 5) that could be less easily adapted,and more easily inspected, for caches of forbidden materials.

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A reciprocity of power within the prison continued to operate. The new floors,probably accompanied by tightened penal regulations, were partially successfuldisciplinary tactics, and the frequency of these “luxuries” appearing in the soli-tary cells decreased. However, the trade did continue, and archaeological evidenceaccumulated within the second floor feature. The material residues of these in-subordinate activities were both scattered through the new floor, and concentratedinside a small pit dug within the western cell.

The female convicts incarcerated within the Ross Female Factory inhabited acomplex social world, a cultural landscape of shifting allies and enemies, of fluidopportunities, and of carefully guarded places. Interpretation of that murky worldrequires juxtaposition of both documentary and material analysis. Architecturalplans illuminate complex variations of landscape appropriation and disciplinaryschemes designed to fabricate virtue within the female factories. Archaeologicalevidence animates the reciprocity of power inherent in the realization of such penaldesigns, as men of the colonial Convict Department shared that built environmentwith stubbornly recalcitrant female convicts.

APPROPRIATIONS OF THE PAST: FEMALE CONVICTISMAND NATIONAL IDENTITY

This theme of landscape appropriation continues today, as these historicplaces retain and revise their political meaning. In analyzing and interpretingthe physical and documentary remains of these female factories, an archaeolo-gist becomes enmeshed in ongoing dialogues of gender and national identity, andactively participates in reconstructions of Australian history. Appropriations oflandscape wrought by British reformatory philosophers, constructed by ConvictDepartment architects, and negotiated by female factory inhabitants, have becomeoverlaid with later Australian appropriations of those historic landscapes, form-ing a palimpsest of cultural meanings. This paper now turns to explore variousappropriations of female convict landscapes, as the Australian colonies struggledtowards post-transportation national identities.

Dodging the Stain

Responding to intensive lobbying pressures from penal reformers (Clay,1985; Jebb, 1985), free settlers (Brand, 1990; Hughes, 1988), and abolitionists(Hattersley, 1965), the British Parliament ceased its program of convict trans-portation to Van Diemen’s Land in 1854. The Launceston Female Factory wastransformed into a house of correction for women convicted of crimes inside thecolony (Bartlett, 1994). It was demolished in the early twentieth century, replacedby Launceston College. Today, remains of a sandstone perimeter wall and stonelined well remain among the college buildings.

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The Ross Factory remained unoccupied after Britain ceased transportation,and was eventually scavenged for building materials. The “commandant’s cottage”became a municipal police station in the 1890s, and was extensively renovated withstone quarried from remaining factory buildings in 1897 (Scripps and Clark, 1991,p. 60). By the 1930s the site was used for grazing sheep.

Intentional abandonment, destruction, or construction over convict-relatedsites formed a material enactment of the complex relationship between the emerg-ing Australian state and the colonial heritage it bore. The conflict over interpretingthis past is summarized by Hughes (1988, p. 596):

Would Australians have done anything differently if their country had not been settled asthe jail of infinite space? Certainly they would. They would have remembered more of theirown history. The obsessive cultural enterprise of Australians a hundred years ago was toforget it entirely, to sublimate it, to drive it down into unconsulted recesses. This affectedall Australian culture, from political rhetoric to the perception of space, of landscape itself.

As Van Diemen’s Land struggled to construct a new economic base, echoesof its penal origins discouraged investors and immigrants from establishing them-selves in the colony (Young, 1996). Recognizing the international stigma and infa-mous myths permanently attached to inhabitants of the island (commonly labeled“Vandemonians”), colonial leaders made unsuccessful attempts to whitewash thepast. As summarized by Hughes (1988, pp. 590, 591):

There was no sudden purging of the Stain, and even its old name stuck to it like tar;‘Vandemonians,’ in the eyes of the free Australian working class, were either criminaldrones or tyrants. “During the last twenty years,” wrote a journalist as late as 1882, “I havebeen thrown among some hundred of immigrants, and I can safely say that not one in ahundred of them knows this island by the name of Tasmania; but it is well-known as VanDiemen’s Land, the land of white slavery.”

Most convict-related sites fell victim to intentional destruction, for “. . . thereseemed little point in keeping obsolete jails and barracks standing as souvenirsof a haunted past” (Hughes, 1988, p. 600). After its closure in 1877, Port Arthur,the cornerstone penal settlement of Tasmania’s convict system, became renamed“Carnarvon,” and attempted to recreate itself as a bucolic rural town (Young, 1996).This appropriation of a past landscape only succeeded on paper; the settlement’spopulation dwindled after its primary industry shut down (Weidenhofer, 1981,pp. 124–132). When a bushfire gutted the remains of Port Arthur in 1897, no firefighting attempts were made. Port Arthur’s model penitentiary, the most sublimematerial expression of Jeremy Bentham’s radial plan in the Southern Hemisphere,was left a blackened, ruined shell.

The Prodigal Son

By the 1960s a new Australian identity was emerging. Embracing their cul-tural distinctiveness, Australians began to view their convict heritage as a centralaspect of their national identity. Within four years, three histories of the Australian

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Convict System were published (Clark, 1962; Robson, 1965; Shaw, 1966). Thesehistories conveyed defensive messages of white Australian nationalism. One au-thor (Robson, 1965, p. 157) wrote:

There is no evidence that Australia received an element of the British population which wasincapable of work or intelligent exertion. A shipload of prisoners who gave every indicationin their home land of being desperate men, or persistent criminals at least, were subjected toa profound change.. . .Being uprooted from old haunts and companions. . . shipped aroundthe world, and set down as a shepherd on a sheep station, must have been a salutary shockto all convicts. There is evidence that this shock treatment was not unsuccessful, and thatdespite bad masters and the stresses and strains of life in a penal colony, the twenty-five-year-old urban convict transported for theft. . .was presented with a golden opportunity tomake a fresh start. It could be done, and it was done.

Grappling to understand their unique national experience, Australians be-gan to develop a new fascination with tracing and commemorating their convictancestry (Young, 1996). Tasmania still retains much of its nineteenth century land-scape, the structures and sites primarily constructed by convict labor. A new touristindustry has emerged in the island state, attracting visitors from mainland Australiawith the promise of “lifestyle with heritage,” as street banners in Hobart declare.This new industry presents a particularly nationalistic heritage to draw Australianvacationers away from their traditional European destinations. Tasmanian tourismasks Australians to forego their discovery of their European roots, to instead cel-ebrate their national identity through tours of convict era landscapes.

This commercially supported, patriotically flavored appropriation of the pastmanifests two particular biases. It presents a sanitized landscape of doily-ladenteahouses and picturesque convict-built bridges—an authentic, yet unthreateningconvict era experience for tourists. Public interpretation projects tend to extol thegrandeur of communal labor and colonial bravery over the alternate and equalreality of forced labor camps and brutal penal institutions (Daniels, 1983; Young,1996). Secondly, the heritage presented is predominantly masculine, a problemoriginating in historical studies of convictism (Robson, 1965, p. 157).

Until recently, most historical treatments maintained an assumed masculinegender for convicts. The female exception was represented as utterly and irre-deemably depraved (Oxley, 1988, 1997; Robinson, 1993, p. 15; Summers, 1975;Sturma, 1978), unworthy of the “golden opportunity to make a fresh start” receivedby her male counterparts. Within these mainstream narratives, female convicts onlyappeared as essentially sexualized and immoral creatures—“[t]heft and prostitu-tion were the main occupations of those born to filth and wretchedness.” (Clark,1956, p. 134). Represented as a monolithic group, the female convicts were deemednecessary for the domestication and expansion of the colonies, yet corrupted bytheir association with a professional criminal class (Hirst, 1983; Oxley, 1996,pp. 4–8). This faceless aggregate of “damned whores” occupied the margins of(male) convict history; authors provided brief discussion of their existence only toconfirm their position as “England’s social sewage” (Oxley, 1997, p. 97).

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CONCLUSION

Archaeological studies of convictism present us with a unique opportunity toboth challenge and contribute to particular approaches to the past. Our researchremains inextricably situated within larger cultural debates, powerfully advocatingsome versions of the past, while authoritatively disputing others. Convict-relatedarchaeological sites must be approached as palimpsests of appropriation: pastarchitectural manipulations constructed specific cultural landscapes, which laterreinterpretations of convictism have overlaid. Archaeological investigations of thiscultural landscape contribute to processes of appropriation in numerous ways.

As I related earlier, Australia has maintained an ambivalent relationship withits convict history. Nineteenth-century images of Tasmania rarely include convicts(Daniels, 1983; Short, 1991). While the fruits of their alienated labor are proudlydescribed or painted, very few depictions of the convicts themselves have enteredthe historical record (Hughes, 1988; Short, 1991). Post-transportation avoidance ofconvict heritage has consciously and purposefully intensified the silence (Hughes,1988). Archaeology first contributes to this discourse by simply recognizing theexistence of convict sites. Such acknowledgment of a cultural landscape challengesthe shadowy presence of convicts in traditional Australian history.

In the specific case of female convictism, the general invisibility has beenexacerbated by past and present inequalities in gender relations (Bickford, 1993;Daniels, 1998, pp. 241–250; Lake, 1997). Archaeological investigations of theRoss Female Factory serve to illuminate the very existence of female convicts inVan Diemen’s Land, an acknowledgment that forms a first step toward engenderingthe past.

Given the tarnished image of female convicts, any research addressing the his-tory of these ignored and maligned women must situate itself within larger debateson gender and power (Damousi, 1997a; Daniels, 1998; Oxley, 1997). Uncriticalarchaeological interpretations can be used to sustain dominant myths, creating fur-ther misogynist fantasies of disempowered wantonness and moral abandon, but canequally well provide scholars with a means to challenge such monolithic presenta-tions of female convictism. The analysis of architectural plans and archaeologicalremains of female factories reveals significant variation in the treatment of convictwomen, variation which both reflected and created differences in power relationsand bodily experiences of the penal landscapes.

Historians have recently traced correlations between transformations inBritish penal policies, changing patterns of literacy and labor within female trans-portees, and variation in punishment schemes experienced by convict women(Damousi, 1997a,b; Daniels, 1998; Ryan, 1995). By virtue of the documentary na-ture of these investigations, they rely on biased and politically motivated accountswritten by factory superintendents, visiting magistrates, Members of Parliament,and bureaucrats of the Convict Department. Material culture adds a new perspec-tive into discourses of and on the past. For women denied access to written modes

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of self-expression, the material world became invested with potent messages of re-sistance and compliance, unity and discord, gender and class identity. Excavationsat the Ross Female Factory have contributed insight into this material world byexploring communications of both the writers and the “written-abouts” (Casella,1999).

Studying the material residue of everyday lives at the female factory, ar-chaeology can offer interpretations of subtle power and gender negotiations, theeveryday acts of intentional nonconformity that may have gone unnoticed andunrecorded (Bickford, 1993, pp. 200, 201). To entertain such interpretations, ar-chaeology needs to move beyond functionalist explanations. Evidence for a fire inthe solitary cells could represent a single accidental event. But within the highlycontested landscape of the female factory, the burning of this particular structurebecomes invested with interpretable messages of women’s rage and collectiveresistance (Daniels, 1998). Given the situational dependency of power negotia-tions, gender and class identities, it is only through interplayed considerations ofboth documentaryandmaterial worlds of everyday factory landscapes that we caninterpret these subtle communications.

Twentieth-century nationalist revisions of history have created a sympatheticand heroic image of convictism (Hughes, 1988; Smith, 1988; Summers, 1975).These histories have been explicitly written in response to the nineteenth centuryshame of “the convict stain.” Both depictions of Tasmanian convicts and convic-tism tend toward dramatized representations, the latter substituting a patrioticallyflavored past for the earlier shunned version. Archaeology provides another voicewithin continuing debates on the convict experience (Karskens, 1986). By virtueof the materiality of its data, archaeology provides new physical “evidence” forrecent historical debates on the quality of life facing a convict woman (Damousi,1997b; Daniels, 1998; Oxley, 1996; Ryan, 1995). We can begin to reconstruct thereal physical landscape experienced and modified by female convicts. Ultimately,archaeological investigation of female factory sites contributes to a balanced viewof the quality of convict life by negotiating between both demonic and heroicimages of the Tasmanian penal landscape.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper could not have been written without inspiration and assistancefrom David Collett and Joan Knowles, the only folks who would brave a field tripto Ross during a Tasmanian winter storm. Funding for the 1997 excavation seasonwas provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research andthe University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. I would also liketo acknowledge the American Association of University Women who providedgenerous support for my research through their American Fellowship Program.I greatly appreciate the assistance of Don Ranson and Angie McGowan fromthe Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. Chris Tassell, Elspeth Wishard, and

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Linda Clark from the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery gave invaluablesupport to this project. Lindy Scripps generously shared her historical researchand collection of primary documents. The Tasmanian Wool Centre of Ross, andthe Riggall Family of Sommercoates Property offered tremendous local supportand accommodation for a weary field crew. Finally, I wish to remember MartinDavies, who helped create the Ross Factory Archaeology Project.

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